


Clouds Reveal the Moon

by busaikko



Category: Dí Rénjié | Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010), 狄仁傑之通天帝國
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Ghosts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-12
Updated: 2011-11-12
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/busaikko/pseuds/busaikko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What comes after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clouds Reveal the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArisTGD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/gifts).



> Many thanks to springgreen for betaing this story.
> 
> A/N: Wǔ Zétiân referred to herself as "the Emperor" while reigning: _historically, she actually declared herself Emperor (huangdi or huangshang), as opposed to just "huangtaiho" (dowager empress?) or "huangho" (empress)._ (Springgreen). I've used Emperor to refer to her in this story for this reason.

Péi Dōnglái came back on foot. Dí was down by the riverside, washing his clothes, when he saw Dōnglái on the track from the village. Even from a distance, he was easy to spot, with his pale skin and hair, and wearing his wide-brimmed hat. Dí had enough time to wring the last of the cold water from his garments, but he had only just started to run the sleeves of his shirt through the laundry pole when he was hailed.

He was curious, the curse of wanting knowledge like a hunger that had not atrophied when ignored.

"You should have servants," Dōnglái said instead of a greeting.

Dí gestured in apology, so sincerely that he knew it would be interpreted as insincerity. "I have regrets instead," he said lightly, and Dōnglái's eyes narrowed. "Help me."

"Have you become so common." Dōnglái's mouth twisted; he had always been bad at hiding his emotions, the ugliness of uncontrolled anger, the sharp focus of intelligence, the barely-restrained irritation when bored, and the terrible, fearful sadness when he'd known he was dying. But now he curled his lip and stretched out his hands to hold the free end of the bamboo pole as Dí slid on his trousers, a robe. Dōnglái's hands were very curious indeed, faint enough that Dí could make out things through them: the moonlight on the sliding dark river water, the sway of the tall grasses on the opposite shore.

"You have news for me," Dí said – it was a natural enough assumption; he had heard many tales of the fantastic in his lifetime. He took the pole from Dōnglái and hefted it to shoulder height, fitting the end to the crook of the branch so it hung suspended and snug between the two trees. When the sun, just now cresting the ridge with rose and golden light, was high in the sky, and the warm air created wind, his clothes would billow and dry. Now, though, they hung heavy,like the corpses of the beheaded set out as a warning. "Come inside. Will you have something to eat?"

Dōnglái made an undignified noise, like a horse's indignant huff. "I don't eat these days. It's a peculiar phenomenon," he went on, following Dí along the narrow track that lead back to the entrance cave. "I don't believe in all these supernatural explanations. Bugs killed me, not divine retribution, after all. But I can still taste the poison." Dí looked back, and Dōnglái shook his head, lines of exasperation between his eyes. "A very faint bitterness, slightly metallic. I might not even have noticed it in the water I was given, except that I _knew_ the poison was there. But that was how many years ago?" He made a dismissive gesture. "Utterly ridiculous."

"But yet ghosts do seem to exist," Dí pointed out, and ducked low to make his way between the great fallen boulders at the base of the cliff.

The cave was only visible from the other side, and even were it to be found, to anyone who didn't know its secrets would see nothing but damp walls and a dirt floor. For Dōnglái, Dí made a show of revealing all his secrets: the concealed ceiling passage, the ladders, the hanging bridge made of twisted vines. They came to an end where the spring broke free of the mountain, tumbling down over the cliff face like a very small dragon taking flight. The view was one of Dí's favorites, especially now, when the morning mists were burning off the wooded mountainside, the sun a brilliant promise of warmth and life. The day's first light danced on the water and spilled into the room. Dí's stubbornness made him cling to caution, and he took a step back and away from a persistent sunbeam. He didn't taste the poison that ran through his veins, but a moment of carelessness would have it burning him alive.

"So it's like that, then," Dōnglái said, eyes moving from Dí's bare feet, to the splash of sun, then up slowly to Dí's face, picking out each tell-tale scar hidden by wrinkles and beard. For a moment Dí could nearly see Dōnglái haloed by the thrashing of his long hair in final indignity, his face charring.

"I suppose it is," Dí agreed. "Keep me company while I have tea."

Dí heated enough spring water for two cups of tea anyway. He set one rough pottery cup on the little table between Dōnglái and himself, and kept his own tucked between his hands to take away the bone-deep chill from doing the washing in the river.

"You are looking well," Dōnglái said, after waiting only long enough for Dí to empty half his cup. He said the polite words like an order. "In the hills east of here, people claim to have seen a woman leading a qilin with the body of a white stag." His nostrils flared. "People are fools, though."

Dí finished his tea. "White deer rarely live to adulthood without protection. Most commonly, the other deer will ostracize one that's different, or kill it outright."

Dōnglái grunted and held up a hand, studying the table through it. "Perhaps the different ones know they cannot hide. Perhaps they feel a duty to watch out for each other."

"And how will you do that?" Dí asked, already weary at the thought of the long journey to the palace. "I have a good life here, you know."

"Trust me," Dōnglái said, like a challenge. Dí laughed at that – trusting the dead was a dangerous path – and Dōnglái looked petulant, like a badly-raised child.

"You will tell me stories on the road," Dí announced, and stood. "Find me my shoes and we can leave tonight."

"I saw the Buddhist grottoes in Dūnhuáng," Dōnglái said. "The grandiose desperation of faith, you might say. I wonder how many of the faithful have escaped the cycle of suffering and death." He quirked an eyebrow. "I found the engineering fascinating, and the languages of foreigners oddly more intriguing in mistranslation."

Dí looked over his shoulder and gave Dōnglái the smile of a Bodhisattva. "Shall I quote Kǒng Qiū on gods and ghosts to you?"

Dōnglái met his eyes, swallowing down anger and emotion, and then lifted his chin with a jerk, pointing at the table where Dí kept all his tools and instruments. "Your shoes are under there, and doubtless full of centipedes. There are other rumors," he added. "And the dead are coming back."

Dí nodded. "You are a good friend," he said, and added nothing to those words, letting Dōnglái disbelieve, if that was his inclination.

* * *

Emperor Wǔ Zétiân dreamed of Shàngguān Jìng'ér flying through the clouds, and when she woke she instructed her women to dress her in simple clothes, suitable for a visit to the temple. She walked from the new palace down the broad boulevard as a sign of her humble will, and all the courtiers scurrying to their first morning duties stopped and fell to the ground as she passed, as if swept down by a single mighty hand. The rightness of this pleased her.

Usually the Emperor's dreams were bloody and banal. She saw those she had had killed, searching for their hands and feet and heads. Turning her back on those visions never worked; when ignored they became serpents sliding under the doors, or cats gliding through the shadows. She felt anger instead of pity, and coolness instead of passion, and was ashamed to wake with sweat on her face.

When she woke from dreaming of Jìng'ér, she had felt anticipation, and thus she turned to her trusted priests to read her the omens. A star had fallen in the west, and a drought had ended, she learned; a marvelous bird whose cry was the name of a Buddhist sutra had flown over a village and then disappeared. From the hills north of the palace came reports of a qilin that shone with white fire.

"Catch it and bring it to me," the Emperor ordered. "I would hear from this auspicious messenger."

So few people these days refused her to her face; perhaps because they knew what happened to those who spoke against her behind her back. She missed the freedom of having wise counselors, but had learned through her own grievous errors that priests must be kept away from power, and that she must temper her confidence with pernicious doubt. The men of the temple were cowed before her, and promised, _yes_ , they would find the qilin, _yes_ , as the Emperor commanded.

Their obsequience was correct, but pitifully amusing.

The Emperor waited half a year, in which time she did not dream. She had a yard prepared at the edge of the palace lake, visible from the floating pavilion. On the night of the midsummer full moon, when all lanterns were darkened at moonrise and the court musicians filled the air with sweet melancholy, a murmur and a commotion came from the inner gate, and the Emperor sent one of her guards to convey her disapproval. The moon slipped behind a thin veil of clouds, and when it emerged, silver light filled the courtyard and showed a small dirty child walking forward, dwarfed by the guard, and behind the child was a white stag, broad antlers seeming to glow.

The Emperor welcomed the stag as if it were a visiting dignitary and allowed the child to curl up and sleep at her feet as the evening's festivities proceeded. In the morning, the child was gone, and some said she must have been the qilin's guiding spirit. The Emperor stopped the foolish rumors with a sharp word, because of course the child had simply returned home.

She marveled that she was the only one left in her court who knew that child. Could it be true that she alone remembered how Shàngguān Jìng'ér had arrived at court? Jìng'ér had been so small and silent, wide-eyed like a doll. When she had finally been taught to talk properly and was allowed in the presence of Wǔ Zétiân, who would become Emperor, she had lowered her gaze and smiled. It had been charming. The Emperor had been amused to give Jìng'ér presents, but the girl had been happiest when the Emperor sent her away, telling her not to return until she had mastered the disciplines necessary to be an imperial guard. Jìng'ér had repaid that gift with the greatest anyone could offer.

The white stag was placid, and all day the Emperor's women amused themselves by feeding it strewn flowers and sweet grass, asking for good luck. Occasionally one would come too close, and then the stag stamped its feet and frightened the women back.

The Emperor was busy hearing reports from her prefectures, but when evening came she led a procession down to the lake and took her meal in the floating pavilion, looking over the water to where the stag grazed. Garlands were tangled in its antlers, and when the moon rose the Emperor saw the child seated on the stag's back, plucking flowers from the strands and looking pleased with herself.

When the Emperor returned to her quarters, the child followed her, and when she dismissed her women, the child knelt at her feet.

The Emperor took up her lacquer comb and seated herself so she could work the tangles out of Jìng'ér's hair. As the knots fell free and heavy strands of hair fell tame and shining down her back, Jìng'ér straightened until all childishness was gone from her face and the clothes she wore were clean and white. She reached one hand up and stopped the comb.

"How can it be right that you do such a thing?" she asked. The Emperor let her take the comb and finish her grooming, and handed her cords to tie her hair up when she was done.

"So formal," the Emperor said. "Do you think that you serve me still?"

"It would be my honor," Jìng'ér murmured, and then looked up, eyes bright; with what emotion, the Emperor could not say.

"Prepare my bed, then," the Emperor said, and watched with fondness as Jìng'ér's hands demonstrated that she had not forgotten the rituals of keeping her Emperor safe and in comfort. She did pause momentarily when she realized she was without the small weapons she had kept with her habitually, but then gave the Emperor a sly, self-pleased smile and held out her hand, palm up. In that instant a bright ball of flame came into being. Jìng'ér tossed it up lightly, caught it in her other hand, and then waved it away. When she turned down the heavy silks on the bed, her hands were clean of any trace of soot.

Jìng'ér dressed the Emperor for bed and helped her lie down with her hair carefully in place, so that her plaits would not be disarrayed. When she was done and the lantern had been extinguished, the Emperor held up the corner of the quilts in invitation. After a moment, Jìng'ér bowed her head in acquiescence.

"As one does when one grows older, I have sometimes wondered," the Emperor said, keeping her tone idle, "what the last sense to die is."

Jìng'ér's reply was made as she lay still like a child dazzled by favor, but the words were sharp. The Emperor felt somehow that she was smiling. "I imagine that it varies. Pain, and regret, perhaps. Duty... I am not sure that duty can die."

"That is because you are simple," the Emperor dismissed, and ran her hand over Jìng'ér's head. In the light that came through the window, she saw the smooth cool strands of hair under her fingers. There was the faint smell of camellia seed oil. "And full of selfishness and pride."

Jìng'ér raised her head quickly, so the Emperor's hand slid down the pale curve of her cheek like a caress. "I am certain that it is as you say."

"A rumor has come to a temple under my patronage, that in the south there is an alchemist who has discovered how to halt death and live eternally young."

Jìng'ér nodded. "I sent Péi Dōnglái to bring Dí Rénjié to you." She closed her eyes, her lashes like ink on skin the color of moonlight. "He will not tell you what you want to hear."

"I was told he became a hermit and sees no one these days."

"He will come," Jìng'ér assured her in a whisper that sounded half-asleep. "Duty will compel him, and we will show him the way."

"Go to sleep," the Emperor snapped, and shifted her shoulders so the covers rustled as a sign that she did not wish to speak any more.

Jìng'ér was silent, and the Emperor fell once again into dreams. She saw the qilin flaming with white, and it led her up a mountain that was a cloud. The wind blew, and she spread her arms and soared, with Jìng'ér at her side. Below, the farms and forests looked like nothing more than a patterned carpet, and above them arched the celestial dome, the ordained orbits of stars and comets, the sun and the moon. The Emperor turned to express her joy to Jìng'ér, but the girl was gone, and then she was falling.

Her eyes snapped open, her heart raced, and she was alone in her bed. Outside her doors she could hear the women scurrying about their duties, hastening to have all preparations ready before the dawn. She would send for Dí Rénjié herself, she decided, and dispatch him to find the truth about the witch who tricked death into a cage.

The Emperor smiled, and called for her women.


End file.
